Updated: St. Clair state prison tour aims to show need for Alabama to downsize its swollen inmate total (slideshow)

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SPRINGVILLE, Alabama -- The state's prison chief and the warden of St. Clair Correctional Facility led a group of reporters on a rare tour of the facility this morning to highlight the need for sentencing reforms.

"We need some help," Warden Carter Davenport said, before taking reporters through general population units where five officers were on the ground to oversee 768 inmates.

Speaking outside a dining hall as a constant stream of inmates entered and left, Davenport recalled a December incident where officers "lost control of the kitchen" and four employees were injured.

"We were lucky," he said. "We were vastly outnumbered."

Capt. Lloyd Wallace, the president of the Alabama Correctional Organization, said too many inmates and too few workers are present in Limestone Correctional Facility, where he works, as well as other Alabama prisons.

"We run the prison because they let us," Wallace said after the tour. "They could take over at any time they wanted to."

Kim Thomas, the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, said the state's prison system is adding 29 inmates a month, and reforms are desperately needed to divert some of those offenders to alternatives forms of punishment.

"Prison is not for everybody," Thomas said. "Prison is not the most effective way to respond to every criminal act."

Currently, the Department of Corrections has custody of more than 26,000 inmates, about half of them convicted of nonviolent crimes, said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the agency. The prison system is operating at more than 190 percent capacity. It has an 11-to-1 ratio of inmates to staff, but that number includes all prison employees and doesn't convey the true staffing on cellblocks, Thomas said. Nationally, the average ratio is 5-to-1, he said.

State Sen. Cam Ward, who was involved in the tour, said Alabama's get-tough efforts in the past created the overwhelming inmate population that is putting staff at risk, straining state budgets and inviting intervention by federal courts.

"This is a broken system," he said Thursday. "We are looking at the edge of disaster, and if we don't do something about it, shame on us."

Ward is sponsoring legislation to encourage sentencing reform. It's not the first time someone has suggested the need to ratchet down prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, but it's a hard sell politically. It's generally more popular for legislators to increase the penalties for crimes; just two of this year's proposals would increase the punishment for those who loot after disasters or who burglarize a church.

Ward's bill would counteract the prevailing political winds by shifting more power to the Alabama Sentencing Commission, a panel whose members include elected officials such as the state's chief justice and attorney general.

Currently, the commission can propose a change in criminal punishments, but nothing happens unless the Legislature approves the recommendation. Even then, judges aren't necessarily required to follow the new guideline, Ward said.

Under Ward's bill, the Legislature would still play a role, but the dynamics would shift: Unless a majority of lawmakers voted to reject proposed changes, the Sentencing Commission's recommendation would take effect. And while there'd still be some flexibility, judges would mostly be expected to adhere to it, Ward said.

"I think it takes some of the politics out of this problem," he said.

Ward, who is chairman of the Legislature's prison oversight committee and a member of the Sentencing Commission, said he based his legislation on an "extremely successful" effort in Virginia.

If the bill passes, those currently in prison won't be affected, Ward said. But going forward, fewer people will go to prison for property and drug crimes, he said, and more space will be available for those who commit armed robberies, murders and rapes.

The measure also will pave the way for truth-in-sentencing reforms for those violent offenders, he said.

Currently, many of them serve only a small fraction of their prison sentence. The Sentencing Commission has discussed a requirement that they serve 85 percent of their sentences, but that isn't possible as long as nonviolent offenders continue to take up an inordinate amount of prison space, Ward said.

"There's no way we could do it," he said. "It would break the bank."

While the Sentencing Commission was supposed to present truth-in-sentencing standards to the Legislature last year, Ward's bill would push that date to 2020.